Mao:
I just suddenly got this metaphor that your story on twitter is actually a James Bond
movie in terms of all the action [that’s happening] in the story.
Egan:
Actually another challenge was that how James Bondie should be, like there was a point
where when things really go wild. Guns are out, guns are firing, people defense moves
and kicks where I got too into the gimmickry. So I had to really pull back on that because
it became almost superficial. Because there was also this kind of mythic element to it—
they are in the mediterranean, there’s this talk about human being is being super, she has
this god-like power or superhuman powers and that myth in my mind kind of balanced
the James Bond, the very kind if archetypal base. Keeping these two balances was really
important. If it really became James Bondie then it’s just trivial.
Mao:
I want to show you this quote from Jack Dorsey:
We wanted to capture that in the name—we wanted to capture that feeling: the
physical sensation that you’re buzzing your friend’s pocket. It’s like buzzing all
over the world…So we looked in the dictionary for words around it, and we came
across the word "twitter," and it was just perfect. The definition was “a short burst
of inconsequential information,” and "chirps from birds." And that’s exactly what
the product was (Sarno).
So…sensation. It’s all about the sensation! Twitter doesn’t want you to read quietly and
peacefully like you are reading a book. It wants to “buzz” you. We were talking about this
James Bond movie thing, and your story is all about sensation, I mean, it’s a spy story.
It’s just amazing how your story come out from these little bursts of sensation.
Egan:
Yeah that’s very interesting. I mean, but, again, I don’t know if that particular quality is
what most interesting about Twitter. It was more, for me, more come out from an interest
in serialization, and that takes us back to the nineteenth century, and the way fiction was
published, where people would read things in parts, and fiction was written to be read in
parts. Dickens, George Elliot, those books were all published in sections. So I’m
interested int that and that’s really more—it was the continuity overtime and suspense
overtime, resisting the wish to know everything right away. That’s what serialization is.
So the idea of I would be buzzing in someone’s pocket, that notion is not that interesting
to me, because in a way, one thing I really dislike about technology is how interruptive it
is; how hard it makes it to just experience, to be there. Honestly, I have not gone on
Twitter since the New Year because right now I’m really in a sort of mindset, trying to
work on something that’s very different. I don’t really want all that in my head. I read
physical newspaper every morning. I’m really old-fashioned but it’s intentional. I don’t